


Four Strong Arms

by JellyDishes



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, FenAbela, fenbela - Freeform, made this ficlet for an aesthetic post and was encouraged to post it, this is why we can't have nice things etc etc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 19:54:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21203165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JellyDishes/pseuds/JellyDishes
Summary: Fenris and Isabela finally get a chance to talk in between the battles and heartache, and as usual they have more in common than they'd thought.





	Four Strong Arms

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated, but please be patient about my responses due to my social anxiety. Thank you in advance!

“They say the past is another country…” Fenris rolled the words aroubd in his tongue, tasting them and finding them bitter and tasting like salt. “But those who say this,” he added without looking up at his companion, “never ask if parting from this place of your birth was a glad parting. If you emerged bloody and screaming but clutching at birth with fisted hands.”

Isabela was quiet for a time after he spoke, her arms drawing closer. “I don’t know if my leaving Rivain was as poetic as all that. Most people would call it stumbling from one port to another until I lucked into my current circumstances.”

“Freedom,” was his answer, “can be a bewildering thing. Can make you more unsteady on your feet than any drink. Strange, how people assume that of you, but not of me.”

Isabela shrugged and rearranged herself where she’d been curled up with her face tucked beneath his chin, where he couldn’t see her face. “Is it? Escaped slaves make a better story than unhappy wives. No matter how the unhappiness began or ended, at least the slave only stole himself.”

“Easier to judge violence you can see, rather than that hidden behind smiles.” He hadn’t closed the circle of his arms around her, not tonight. Sometimes he could feel the tension thrumming through her, no matter how light her tone, and knew that she would leave as soon as she’d come if he tried even the most well meant of restraints. Even now, he coukd feel the well defined muscles in her shoulders bunch and release.

“Leave the poetry for the people with the luxury of wanting to sightsee in that country,” she said, half to him but seemingly half to herself, as well. “Don’t look back. We aren’t going that way.”

There were many things he could say to that, some a sigh or a bite or simple weariness given form, but instead he tilted his chin back. He stared unseeing at the gathering storm clouds through the home in his mansion’s roof. From this angle, it could almost have seemed like mist. One that rolled and boiled, inevitably pushing that white and grey wash over everything, obscuring everything. “Maybe,” he murmured, “it can be as simple as saying that the past is unknowable as that other country. Mysterious and far and filled with stories that may as well belong to a stranger.”


End file.
